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Secretary of Transportation asks the industry for help

February 20, 2007

INDIANAPOLIS — U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters asked a gathering of powersports industry leaders to help the government ease an alarming increase in the number of national motorcycle crashes and fatalities.

Speaking at the annual Motorcycle Industry Council meeting held before the opening of the Dealer Expo, Peters focused on two safety issues: training costs and availability and the use of helmets. Peters even suggested that manufacturers should fold the price of helmets into the final price of a new motorcycle, meaning consumers couldn’t buy one without the other.

In discussions with the media after her speech, Peters said it was merely an idea and that she wasn’t there to “tell (the industry) what to do.”

“We could save, we know, more than 700 lives each year if everybody put a helmet on every time they got on a bike,” Peters said. “But right now, unfortunately, only 58 percent of riders wear their helmets and that rate is 13 percent lower than it was just four years ago.”

Read more about Peters’ speech in the March 12 edition of Powersports Business.